It’s far too easy to run out of disk space. If you have countless high-resolution photos, hundreds of HD-quality movies, and tens of thousands of songs, you can find yourself hitting your memory limit in no time.

Open the Settings app, navigate to System > Storage, and click on your primary drive. You will be presented with a list of different categories along with how much space they’re using. Scroll down until you find Temporary Files, then click on it.

Lastly, mark the checkbox next to Previous Versions of Windows and hit Remove Files.

The update cache consists of copies of the update installation files. The operating system uses them if you’re ever forced to reapply an update; it saves downloading them again. Although it’s a good idea, they take up a lot of space. Unless you either have a very slow Internet connection or you’re seriously limited with data caps by your ISP, you can safely remove them.

Sadly, the process is not particularly straightforward.

The first step is stopping the Windows Update service. Search for Services, right-click on the top result, and open it as an administrator.

Next, scroll down the list of entries until you find Windows Update. Right-click on it and choose Stop.

Now you’ll need to delete the files. Press Windows key + R to open the run box, then type C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\ and hit Enter.

You can delete everything within the Downloads folder.

Lastly, you’ll need to head back to services and re-enable Windows Update.

There is one key difference – Sleep mode saves all your open documents and running applications to your device’s RAM, whereas Hibernate saves it all to the hard disk. Sleep is akin to putting a television on standby, whereas Hibernate lets your computer shut down completely.

If you don’t use hibernate mode, you can disable it. This will automatically delete any associated saved data from previous hibernations.

(Clearly, you should not do this if you find yourself making regular use of the feature).

To disable it, search for Command Prompt, right-click it, and choose Open as Administrator.

Type powercfg.exe -h off and press Enter. That’s it, you won’t see a notification or confirmation.

If you change your mind, repeat the above steps, but type powercfg.exe -h on instead.

4. Delete Delivery Optimization Files

Windows 10 introduced a new update feature – called “Delivery Optimization” – that allows your computer to pull updates from other machines nearby. The theory is that updates will be delivered faster, but in practice, a lot of people have complained about higher bandwidth usage and increased memory usage.

It’s easy to delete the files, but first you’ll need to disable the feature – otherwise the files will just accumulate again.

Head to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Advanced Options > Choose How Updates Are Delivered. Once there, make sure the slider is set to the Off position.

Now search for Disk Clean-up and open the app. It’ll spend a few seconds scanning your device before presenting you with a list of files that can be removed. Scroll down until you find the entry called Delivery Optimization Files. Click in the checkbox, then hit OK. Windows will take care of the rest.

5. Delete the OEM Recovery Partition

Most computers come with an OEM recovery partition. Thanks to Windows 10, they are largely redundant and can be safely removed. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to create a recovery drive. Typically, this means using a USB stick.

Windows comes with a handy tool for creating a drive; you can find it by searching for Create a Recovery Drive from the Taskbar.

Follow the on-screen instructions and enter a USB stick when prompted. Once the process is finished, you’ll see the option to delete the recovery partition from your PC on the final screen. Click the link and choose Delete to proceed.

6. Delete the Windows 10 Recovery Partition

Warning: Only proceed with this option if you are desperate because you will lose the ability to use any of Windows 10’s recovery options and you will not be able to boot into the recovery environment to troubleshoot other aspects of the operating system.

It’s highly advisable to make complete backups of your data and create a USB recovery drive before continuing.

Firstly, open Command Prompt as an administrator. Type Diskpart and press Enter, then type List disk and press Enter again.

Next, type Select disk X (replace the X with the number of the disk where your recovery partition is saved). Then type List volume.

You’ll be shown a list of all the volumes on the disk, including your recovery partition. Type Select volume X (replace X with the correct number, on my machine, it’s Volume 2).

What settings have you tweaked to get more from your disk space? Have you found a cool Windows 10 disk saving feature that I’ve not covered? I’d love you to get in touch with your own ideas in the comments box below.

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Philippe Verdy

January 29, 2019 at 8:47 pm

Just use the "DISM++" free tool to autoamte almost all this. It's a clean tool that works very fast and is very reliable on all versions of Windows 10 (including Insider versions, and Pro editions, though I did not test it in Enterprise editions)
It does not even need to be installed: a zip to download and extract, you can remove the "arm64" and "x86" subfolders safely if you just use the "x64" version (for Intel/AMD 64-bit versions of Windows).
Then run from it: a basic UI that contains a section for cleanup, another that will automate installations of Windows Update (much faster than the default Windows Updates in the Settings), will allow you to easily install or remove optional Windows features (including languages), will cleanup the old restoration points (it creates a new retoration point and delete the older ones that take considerable space).
On a typical Windows 10 Pro + Office installation and some apps like alternate browser, you'll immediately save about 20 GB just after a clean installation of Windows or about 16GB after each release (most of the space is taken by system updates, and restoration points).
It also contains various settings of the UI experience in File Explorer or Settings (including settings that are hard to fond or no longer accessible with the new Settings, and some that were removed from the UI of the Control Panel: many of them are jsut registry settings). It can also cleanup your browsers (not just Edge or IE), and help you customize a version of Windows before doing a SysPrep for creating a new reinstallable ISO, and you can setup the Sysprep settings to include the favorite apps you want to have preinstalled.

It can also remove all the commercial "bloatware" that Microsoft adds (even when they are very undesirable, such as games or social networks like Facebook, or media apps like Netflix on a Windows Pro!).

It will also help you remove old unnecessary drivers coming with Windows (don't wrotty Windows can reinstall them from Windows Update if needed).

It also cleanups the "WinSxS" containing multiple versions of system files in cache.

It also automates the compression of read-only system files (you can save an additional amount of about 6GB, without impact on performance).So your cleaned version of Windows would take less than 16GB (including with a 8GB swapfile and the 1.5GB pagefile with Universale Windows Appx from MS Store), plus the hybernation file if you configured hybernation for fast boot (not needed at all if your system drive is a SSD): with the cleanups, you Windows startup time (starting just before UEFI or lagacy BIOS boots)..

And it's compeltely free, translated in many languages (the original language is Simplified Chinese). And it's safe because it does everything that adminsitrators would otherwise do with Windows builtin "DISM" tool (but from the console with overly complex syntax and parameters).

You can find it on the author's site (www.chuyu.me). The English translation is complete, even though the release notes are most often written only in Chinese for now. But they are quite easy to translate to Englush using an online Translator and copy-pasting it to it.

It has extensive online support (in English or Chinese) but the tool is supported in various other languages (including major European ones, in Latin, Cyrlllic, Japanese, Turkish...)

Dan is a British expat living in Mexico. He is currently a Senior Writer and the Affiliate Optimization Manager for MakeUseOf. At various times, he has been the Social Editor, Creative Editor, and Finance Editor. He is also an Editor for MUO's sister site, Blocks Decoded and a Senior Writer for VPN Proof. Prior to his writing career, he was…